Splish Splash
by joecarioca
Summary: After fending off a monster, Rocket finds himself in a literal mess. Enlisting Peter's help, he does everything he can to make things uncomfortable for the Star-Lord for his own amusement.


Yeah so I jumped on this bandwagon, and this Idea wouldn't leave my mind until I wrote it. Enjoy (I hope!). Feel free to leave comments or whatnot! : )

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"Hey, hey, you're trailing man!" Quill called out as Rocket trudged in front of him. The mutant, the science experiment—the raccoon—turned and looked down, at last becoming self-aware of the path of green gunk he was leaving behind on his weighted tail.

"That ain't my fault," said Rocket bluntly, looking up to Peter.

"Yeah but… You can just hold your tail or something. Come on, this is new and we're going to try to keep this a little bit cleaner."

He had not been the only one to suffer some sort of injury at the hands of the monster they'd faced. In fact, Drax was the only one who had walked away unscathed. Gamora's jaw had been temporarily knocked out of place, Groot's arms had been ripped off by the creature, and even Quill had gotten a black eye out of the ordeal. Rocket had taken some of most annoying damage, planting an explosive on the creature and then not being able to duck in time as it blew into chunks of blubber, bone, vital organs, and a mysterious green goo. No one really wanted to think too hard about what this was, exactly, but Rocket had gotten his fur coated in it and it appeared to be impossible to get out.

"Aw, crap…" the raccoon murmured with a grumble, looking down over his shoulder and huffing at the sight of his tail. He attempted to pull a hunk of the mess it out, wincing as it was attached to the fur on his tail firmly. He looked down at this with a furrowed brow and looked up, scanning his companions.

"Are you in need of assistance, small mammal?" asked Drax, having examined his blade and noting a chip in the tip of it before placing it back in its holster with this slightest of frowns.

Rocket paused, catching a glimpse of himself in a shiny metal panel on the ship, "…Yeah. I'll be at this all week otherwise. Quill, you're comin' with me."

Quill had been halfway to stretching his headphones over his ears when he stopped, looking about the room for any other Quills, presumably, "…What?"

"Yeah you. Who the hell else would I be talking about? I need help," Rocket practically choked out the last bit of this sentence, and Gamora ever-so-slightly pushed Quill forward. Star-Lord spun around to protest, but shrunk at the look he'd learned to read without even a word over the past few months. Even with an aching jaw she could still speak on levels.

"…Yeah. Yeah we can do that," Quill replied, resting his headphones around his neck and following Rocket, who was preoccupied on tugging on the green mess on his left arm now.

"…You sure you can't get Groot to do this? You seem like you're… Both close enough to be comfortable with something like this…. This feels like a Groot job," Quill watched as the tub filled with water and Rocket reached up on his tip-toes to test the temperature of the water. Finding it a bit too warm, he cursed and input a lower number on the panel that controlled the temperature.

"He kinda don't got no arms right now," Rocket explained.

"Well there's… Drax…"

Rocket turned around and looked up at Peter critically, "If you were my height and made of squishy vital organs, would you let Drax do this? Even if he meant well I'd end up a pancake."

Peter thought this through, cringing at the possible scenarios that ran through his head, most of which resulted in Rocket looking like a small fur throw rug. Rocket began to undo the shoulder pads to his outfit and gave a low growl, "…Looks like it bled through the fabric…"

"Woahhhh!" Peter held up his arms and practically slammed against the wall of the bathroom as Rocket began to slide out of the rest of the outfit. "Okay, we're friends, but…"

"Quill. I can't reach my back, and I've got all… That back there," Rocket's blue uniform was in his hand and his back was still to Peter as he motioned to the implants decorating his upper body. "So you can either be a little baby about this or help me out."

"I'm not being a baby! I'm not… I just… You could've warned a guy before you started taking off your pants!"

"Well I guess twenty-two prisons kinda does away with a guy's modesty," Rocket replied as he climbed in to the tub with a hiss. The water had stopped pouring in, but he'd still made it a little too warm for his liking.

"This from the guy who started shouting when Gamora walked in while he was changing…" Quill rolled up the sleeves of his gray shirt and knelt down in front of the tub.

"Well that's when I didn't know where we stood!"

"Wait. What?"

"Well, I dunno. Now we're fin and I know where we stand, but back then for all I know she could've been in to it and trying to sneak and peek. I may be cheap, but the show ain't free!"

"I somehow don't think she's in to your type…" Quill said as he reached over to grab a jar of soap usually used for cleaning up grease off of their hands while working on the ship's engine.

"Hey, you'd be shocked at exactly how many ladies are into this!" Rocket replied. "Ladies and then some…"

"This is so much I didn't need to know about you while you're naked."

"Just start at the neck. Don't go too south of the border, you hear me? I know you guys gave me that stupid "no biting" rule after stupid "game night" thing you tried, but if you do anything funny I will not hesitate to break that."

Peter gulped and reached forward, placing his soap-lathered hands on Rocket's neck. After a few moments of silence he felt something like a purr, followed by a moan by Rocket of, "Oh, baby, yeah… Yeah… That's the SPOT! Oh God, lower!"

"OKAY! I am not doing this!" Quill leapt up to his feet immediately as Rocket was in the middle of snorting with laughter, and held up both his arms in defeat. "Not doing this. You made this weird. You ruined this and made this weird."

"I'm just messing with you!" Rocket resumed taking some of the soap for himself, rubbing it on a washcloth, and scrubbing a side of his muzzle with it. "Come on, I'll behave, I promise."

"Nothing. Else. Weird," Quill warned as he leaned back down and resumed his washing. As much as he did to be respectful of Rocket, think of Rocket less as an animal, more of a person… He couldn't help but be reminded of life back on Terra, and helping his grandfather wash an old hound dog he'd kept as a pet one summer afternoon in exchange for enough money to hit the arcade during the evening. It'd been a nice distraction from… Everything.

He came back to reality as he realized the purring had returned. He stopped his washing, as did Rocket, who wordlessly froze from his methodical cleaning of his face, noticing it for the first time as well.

"That don't mean nothin'," Rocket insisted quietly and quickly. "It just happens sometimes."

"Eh? Yeah, that's okay. I just never knew raccoons purred is all."

He let the word slip out before he could even think. "Raccoon". Rocket had formed a complicated relationship with it. While he insisted that he was a one-of-a-kind, Quill had heard him give it once or twice as his last name when they were visiting a planet.

"What are you, an idiot? I thought they were common on your planet! How could you not know they did that?"

"I didn't exactly stay there long," Quill snapped in return, resuming his washing and now working on Rocket's shoulders. "Plus you didn't exactly walk up and hug them… Rabies and all."

"Rabies?" Rocket turned slightly, and Quill noticed some of the suds from the soap had chosen to rest atop the raccoon's head. It would have been amusing to see the little gun-happy maniac like this if his mind wasn't racing at that moment.

Oh the minefield he'd walked in to. Quill remained silent a moment before clearing his throat and resuming his washing, "Yeah, it's…. Something raccoons could give to other species by biting them… N-Not all raccoons, but… They're known to carry it, some of them in the wild."

"What's it do?"

"Um… Foaming at the mouth and I think it makes their brain… Get too big or explode or something. I don't remember. All I know is it didn't work out so well for Old Yeller."

"Wait. So... You're telling me that on your home planet… Raccoons have the ability to make brains explode?"

"…Yeah… If you want to look at it that way."

Rocket spun around to totally face him, a grin on his face like a child who'd received the last Cabbage Patch Kid in the store on Christmas, "That is seriously one of the most amazing things I've heard in my LIFE!"

"I'm glad you think so?" Quill replied, more baffled then anything. "Oh, um… Hey, I think some of that stuff got in to one of your things…"

"…"Things" can mean a lot of things, Quill…" Rocket replied, almost cautious.

"On your back. One of those little plug things."

"Seriously? Damn it…." Rocket's head drooped a little bit, and he rose from the tub. "I'm gonna have to ask you for an even bigger favor then."

They'd taken a pause from mess to focus on Rocket's implant. A majority of it was gone from his back, and totally vanished from his dampened face and half of his stomach. He'd taken a seat on the lip of the tub, a towel laid of his lap and a stern look on his face. At the same time Quill examined the long, chopstick-like took he'd retrieved from the workroom under Rocket's guidance, shifting his glances between it and Rocket's back.

"Which one's it in?"

"Lower right."

"All right. Just wanted to know where you'd be going in at…" Rocket sucked in a sharp breath and straightened his posture.

"So just… Put it in…?"

Rocket barely held back a chuckle, "Not… Not unless you're gonna buy me dinner first. HahaHA!"

"Okay, I swear to God this is verging on sexual harassment now," Peter snapped.

"Hey, I need to find some humor in this somehow," Rocket wiped the tears brought about by laughter away and straightened his posture yet again. "All right, now don't go just jabbing around in there. I ain't a pin cushion."

"All right," Peter took in his own deep breath and inserted the thin rod into the implant, pulling it out and wiping off the green muck off on a towel before entering in again. It was silent in the bathroom. The only noise was that of metal-on-metal as the chopstick rubbed against the metal, the breathing of the two men, and the water dripping from Rocket's fur and back into the tub with the green-tinted water.

Peter nearly jumped back when Rocket broke the silence with a long trail of laughter as he dug out the green goop. This caused Peter to nearly drop his instrument, and he only just stopped it from falling to the wet ground.

"What the hell, man?!"

"I-I'm sorry! It just… It tickles!"

"What am I hitting here anyway?" Peter attempted to keep Rocket still by holding him by the back of the shoulders and neck as he continued, and Rocket answered through a series of chuckles and snorts.

"That… It hits… HAHA! My spine!" he said, horrifyingly, though a fit of laughter.

Peter felt the blood leave his face, "What?! I'm touching your SPINE and you didn't want to say something about it?!"

"Y-Yeah," Rocket wiped his eyes and rubbed his chest to stave off the aching from his fit of laughter. "I didn't want you freakin' out on me."

"Oh God… Then… Oh God…" Peter furrowed his brow as he continued, hissing through his teeth as he removed another glob.

"What? Don't be so soft! You've saved the galaxy before, c'mon!"

"It's not that… This isn't hurting you or anything, is it?"

Rocket's ears perked up, and any signs of his laughter was gone. In fact, this was the rare serious moment Peter caught of the raccoon while sober. "…Nah. It doesn't. But… Thanks for askin'. More than a lot of folks have done."

"…What are these for, anyway?" Peter asked casually. He didn't think much of it… He'd asked Gamora about hers modifications previously, and she'd been willing enough to share—This was under the presumption that if anything happened to her due to her modifications, he'd be able to know what the cause was, and possibly help or get help. There'd been no reason to ask Rocket, however. He seemed self-sufficient enough. Self-sufficient because he'd had to be for so long that he seemed to want to stay that way. But Peter realized that he'd touched another nerve—And not a literal one, this time.

For a while the silence returned. A few drops of water falling from Rocket's muzzle and into the tub, and Peter shifted his weight on his knees and cleared his throat in a weak attempt to break the awkward.

"…Sorry. That was… You don't have to…"

"It controlled movement," Rocket replied. "That was one of the uses, anyway. They could also attach other things if they wanted to. I don't remember what all what, exactly, but I know they were multiuse."

Instinctively, as he spoke, he brought one of his paws up to one of the metal attachments around his collarbone, gracing his clawed fingers over it.

"…That really sucks," was all Quill could muster.

"Yeah," Rocket agreed wryly.

"….Should all be out now, Rocket."

"Great. I should be able to grab the rest of this."

"You sure?" Quill asked as Rocket tossed aside the towel and slipped back in to the tub.

"Yeah, unless you're wanting to get a good look at something?" Rocket sat back in the tub and retrieved his washcloth. Peter rose from his knees as the raccoon continued to wipe more of the mess off of his neck, and Quill had just made it to the door when he was stopped by Rocket's making a sound akin to a cough, presumably to get the man's attention.

"Hey, uh… Thanks for this. Not a lot of guys are willing to clean a guy's spine off for him."

"That's me. Professional… Spine cleaner. Never thought I'd say that, but, hey, it'll make for an interesting story next time I'm at the bar."

"If that's the case, why not broaden your cleaning horizons even more and give my jumpsuit a shot?"

"I am not washing your onesie for you. I am going to take it to the laundry room, hope it doesn't smell up the place again, and that's as far as it's going. We got you a stool so you can do those things for yourself."

"Someone's gonna be lucky to have you one of these days!" Rocket shouted out the bathroom door as Star-Lord walked out, smirking, laundry in one hand and now-retrieved Walkman in the other.


End file.
